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DRM en libros electronicos
by KURT SCHILLER | In January 2009, ebook distributorFictionwise announced that about 300,000 ebook purchases would become invalid within a month. Although those files that had already been downloaded by customers would continue to work, users would no longer be able to download new copies. That meant that there was no possibility of putting the ebooks on a new device and no chance of getting a replacement if the original file was lost or deleted. A Happy Medium: Ebooks, Licensing, and DRM Insider’s Perspective Moving Target: Understanding Customer At what point does aggressive competition become an illegal attempt to monopolize an industry or a product? Microsoft committed antitrust violations in tying its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer web browser together and restricting access to other browsers. In the legal industry, Thomson Reuters ran up against antitrust issues when it purchased its competitor, Lawyers Cooperative Publishing. As a result, Thomson Reuters was forced to sell several competing titles in order to avoid an antitrust lawsuit. Now, the same question has arisen for Intel, which has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission Citizens Now Are Copyright Stakeholders, beginning I n June 1994, Stevan Harnad, a cognitive scientist at the University of Southampton in the U.K., posted a message on a mailing list that called on fellow researchers to make their papers freely available on the internet. The message became known as the Subversive Proposal. “For centuries,” wrote Harnad, “it was only out of reluctant necessity that authors of esoteric publications made the Faustian bargain to allow a price-tag to be erected as a barrier between their work and its (tiny) intended readership because that was the only way to make their work public in the era when paper publication (and its substantial real expenses) were the only way to do so. But today there is another way. …”In the online age, scientists can make their research freely availableto all, he wrote, allowing them to better “build on one another’s work in that collaborative enterprise called learned inquiry.” And the self-archiving movement was born; this later became known as Green Open Access. Concluding that the logical place for researchers to make their papers available was not in large discipline-based databases such as arXiv (the physics preprint server) but in a network of local repositories, Harnad also became a key figure in the development of the institutional repository movement. But it has been far from smooth sailing. Harnad had assumed that researchers would immediately see the logic of self-archiving, not the least of which are the benefits they would gain from the greater visibility and impact that their research would have once it was freely available. The event that instigated this announcement was eceptively mundane: One of the companies that supplied Fictionwise’s ebooks said it would no longer be an ebook supplier. Fictionwise neither owned nor had direct access to the ebook files and depended upon its supplier for the files as well as to authenticate the digital rights management (DRM) system for each ebook. The DRM system was in place to ensure that each file was only used in one device. Fortunately for the affected customers, this tale has a happy ending. Fictionwise, which Barnes & Noble acquired last March, worked with publishers to secure the titles in other formats, which customers could then use to replace their original purchases. Although not all of Fictionwise’s difficulties can be blamed on DRM, the licensing and digital content is at the heart of the incident. After all, a printed book remains the same no matter what troubles befall the publisher. Fictionwise’s dilemma also illustrates why DRM is one of the most contentious issues in the ebook industry today. In the Shadow of Napster In early 2009, The New York Times reported that ebook piracy is increasing, keeping pace with the growing popularity of ebooks. Not surprisingly, publishers are taking measures to prevent widespread piracy in other digital mediums. Of course, ebook piracy is nothing new: In 2000, author Harlan Ellison filed suit against a man for illegally distributing a number of his works through Usenet discussion groups. Ebooks were being pirated almost as soon as they were created. When digital copyright and the threat of piracy are mentioned, most people may think about Napster, the controversial peer-to-peer network that popularized online music and yet forced almost every information and content industry to re-evaluate piracy, online sales, and content protection. Napster proved that the growing online masses were hungry for content and inspired a host of legal alternatives; it also convinced industries that copy protection was essential. “One thing initially that has driven DRM’s sometimes- implementation is that everyone sees what has happened in the music industry,” says Scott Bain, litigation counsel for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). “When they moved to digital and made the decision to have CDs that were unprotected ... once you let that cat out of the bag, it never goes back in. And I think people have observed that, and I think it’s fair to say that people in the publishing industry want to learn from that example.” Comparing ebooks to digital music provides a striking contrast: While the first MP3 players (such as the Diamond Rio, which hit the market more than a decade ago in 1998) made no allowance for DRM or copy protection, the first portable e-readers included DRM provisions from the beginning and were built around the notion of legally purchased books. And while the recording industry was essentially blindsided by the widespread piracy that ccompanied the ever-popular MP3s, the publishing industry dug in from the start, anticipating that piracy would quickly become an issue. It secured its content behind a protective layer of rights and encryption. Caveat DRMptor Kirk Biglione, a new-media consultant and cofounder of the pro-consumer media blog Medialoper, writes frequently on the subject of DRM in media. One of his most prominent criticisms of DRM use in ebooks and elsewhere is what he perceives as a lack of transparency. Because of the variety of ebook formats and DRM schemes, as well as the inconsistent labeling practices by retailers, it can be difficult for consumers to tell what restrictions are placed on the content they’re purchasing. Although this problem may seem to have an easy solution (to provide clearer information about the DRM in use on particular titles), it doesn’t. The fact remains that thereare competing ebook formats and competing DRM schemes. Many DRM systems also contain more restrictions than copy protection: Some systems have built-in download limits, some may lock files to a particular device, and some even disable certain reader functionalities. Asimilar situation existed in the early days of the digital music industry, but the emergence of Apple and its iTunes platform created a de facto standard for digital music. Amazon also may be on its way to becoming just such a force. Biglione points out that many of Amazon’s standards and practices seem to be modeled on Apple’s example. But the trend now is diversification rather than standardization. Just take a look at the increase in the number of e-readers during the past several months, each with its own list of supported formats, DRM systems, and restrictions. Unlike Apple, Amazon allows publishers to dictate the specifics about the restrictions on content, according to Biglione. So while iTunes purchases are uniform in price and DRM-related restrictions, ebook purchases can differ from publisher to publisher and from book to book. Amazon also allowed publishers to remove or alter content retroactively: In one well-publicized example last July, copies of a certain version of George Orwell’s 1984 were deleted from customers’ Kindles after a copyright dispute questioned the publisher’s distribution rights. In another example, publishers were allowed to deactivate the Kindle’s text-to-speech functionality for several purchased ebooks after a dispute over audiobook rights with The Authors Guild. Although Amazon apologized for the 1984 incident and said it wouldn’t happen again, the example highlights the content control that Amazon and publishers have over content, even after its purchase. Biglione also downplays the immediate threat of ebook piracy, pointing to an ongoing study dating from 2008 done by consulting group Magellan Media Partners and a graduate student at New York University. The study, which focused on titles from O’Reilly Media, found that it took an average of 20 weeks before a newly released title appeared on filesharing networks. “By then,” says Biglione, “a book has worked its way through the retail system.” The study also found fewer pirated titles than expected. But while the Magellan study suggests that piracy may be overstated in some cases, there’s also evidence that the case is different in other genres: Last September, CNN and other news outlets reported Information Today